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Sunday, May 13, 2012

Hey Ram! Leave Sita alone

Courtesy - Google

I wonder why people refuse to let go of Sita? The lady renounced public life 7000 years back and went underground. Hopefully after years of wilderness, she found salvation there. Sita was a case of bad karma. Despite having everything – good looks, royal lineage, moolah and a prince charming, she led a life far worse than a beleaguered tele bahu.

If you can’t stop outraging about how much your life sucks and what a wimp your boss is, it’s time you knew what the lady had to go through. The loyal one, who willingly followed her banished husband, wasted her youth in the jungles. Sita has many firsts to her credit - the first recorded case of a woman who dared to cross the line.

Unfortunately she got abducted by a Sri Lankan ten headed monster with a major dandruff problem. She was also the first Indian woman to fly in a private jet and travel abroad, inspiring a New York based travel agency to name itself after her – Sita Travels.

Even though she does get reunited with Ram after a daring rescue mission that looked straight out of a James Bond novel – Sita doesn’t get to live a happily after. Constantly doubted and made to sit for various exams, a pregnant Sita finally gets thrown out by her self-righteous husband. A husband who should have stood by his loyal wife, chose to pay heed to a Dhobi trying to act like the social media. When he should have said - Shutup! My wife is my personal matter, he ended up saying Get lost wifey, my Dhobi hates your face!

Imagine Abhishekh Bachhan abandoning Aishwarya just because the media can’t stop passing mean comments about her weight gain and her colourful sartorial choice!

Ironically people are still quoting from epics without probably having read or understood the underlying message. A Congress of fools, in a rare show of camaraderie, implored PJB to commit the same mistake as Ram and dump their bearded soul mate Modi.

Now that PJB is Ram, it’s only fair to compare the Congress of fools to Ravana. Come to think of it, the party does have too many heads and not one of them sees eye to eye.

Will the Bhartiya Party of the Public now wait for the C-party scion to do a Sita haran with NaMo and keep him imprisoned in a Dalit hut? If the self-righteous PJB does dump the Gujarat CM, will Modi jump in the nearest manhole to seek salvation? And most importantly, is the C party suggesting that it’s perfectly normal to torch cities with the mere swish of your tail?

Will all these secrets be revealed break ke baad? Unlikely. We all know politics is no Ramayana but a Mahabharata.

If PJB is expected to do a Ram, then Mumbai HC judge PB Majumdar expects womankind to do a Sita. While hearing an appeal by a husband seeking divorce from his wife on the ground that she was not willing to shift with him to Port Blair where he was transferred, Judge Majumdar counselled - "A wife should be like goddess Sita who left everything and followed her husband Lord Ram to a forest and stayed there for 14 years."

When Sita heard this bullshit, she had no choice but to break her vow of silence. She sighed – Ahh, the joys of being a single mother with not a single paisa for child support! And the burn marks from the Agni Pariksha still hurt.

Port Blair residents are fuming because the Judge dared compare this idyllic town to a forest!

The modern Nari chortled – Somebody please tell the Judge, a wife is not a Hutch Puppy! The only forest we’ve heard of is, Forest Essentials. And doesn’t he know that it’s distance that makes the heart grow fonder? It’s only when our husbands leave for office, do we start missing them!

And just because your memory is shorter than Poonam Pandey’s skirt, doesn’t mean we’ll let history repeat itself.

Sita always brings out the best in you. You just love her and Ravan(not the two movies I am sure). You should write a version of Ramayana, seriously. Agree with the line that people have this bad habit of quoting scriptures without really understanding them. Not just scriptures, they will quote anything that they feel will make them sound intelligent.

I have never been a Ash fan but she deserves respect for her choices...to opt for labour pains, to breast feed her baby and to take care of her kid minus the ayahs...You are so right. The media needs to leave her alone. I dread how they will react when she walks the red carpet at Cannes with all her happy weight.

Sita and you make an awesome combination :D Somehow she brings out the best of your writing skill :D I was pretty disgusted with the Judge saying that woman should follow her husband like Sita! As we dont know what happened next :P And I m just fed up with the Ash's weighty issues which are more important to media than other things!

The modern times are like six blind men trying to describe an elephant with a touch of whatever part it is feeling to describe the creature. You have cited enough examples, Purba to illustrate this so I do not need to add any more:)

I like the way you mix two topics into one add so much of sarcasm and still it makes me laugh!!"My Dhobi does not like your face!"~ Where do you come up with such stuff.

I think Ramayana was the first soap in terms of sniffling women and communication issues .Kaikeyi wanted Bharat to be the King.She should've simply called Ram and told him that.Ram,I'm sure,would've agreed.No Vanvaas,no sita haran,no agnipareeksha.And nobody would've asked me to be servile like Sita maiyya!!!

Sita actually was more liberated than she is being portrayed as by those who haven't got a clue about her character. In fact, all our goddesses and women from history and mythology were liberated and strong. So how come they have become so oppressed in recent centuries? Systems haven't changed, power structures have. Loved this take on Sita :)

oh my dear mother, how do you manage to write this well!!! LOL triple times!!!! Re: Sita syndrome:a wonderful S. India researcher whose name escapes my mind at this moment wrote a piece on Goddesses--how there are two levels of goddesses--one, the independent ones like Durga (who drank and flirted) and Kali (who was a nudist and a rebel) and the domesticated goddesses like Lakshmi, Sita and how in course of history we have adulated and given higher positions to domesticated Goddesses compared to independent ones...how many folks outside Bengal call their daughter Durga as compared to Lakshmi or some such versions?

No. The chapter is in a book titled "Is the Goddess a Feminist?: The Politics of South Asian Goddesses" and the chapter author is Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan.

Yes, Maa Kali evokes something within me too...but I don't find her indifferent--actually I find her consummately obsessed with us, so much so that she rushes towards us in a frenzy, forgetting her clothes, hair blown, teeth unbrushed, focused so much on us that all else is thrown aside. She is a mother worried about her child in distress.

Loved the satire. The 10 heads of Ravan with massive dandruff probs and the party heads that can never look at each other. LOL.Well, my doubt is, why only sita? There wr Goddesses who never constrained themselves inside a home and wasted their life, who fought for a cause. Why don't people remember them once in a while? Given a choice, I'd prefer to share my life with some rebellious and independent bold lady like them and not one like sita.

Incredibly well written!! Loved it even more because I am an ardent fan of mythologies and this "interpretation" of mythologies in modern context was brilliant. Loved the bit about junior AB dumping Ash for her weight issues. I agree. There are many other excellent reasons to dump Ash but not for this :)BTW : Have you read Iravati Karve's "Yuganta" ? If not, please read it asap. If you can't find the book, let me know - I'll lend you my copy.

Taking your PS:"Psst... let me know what you are thinking" for granted, I felt a pressing need to give you my feedback for this article. I really appreciate your satirical diction and catchy humor.

Letting alone the political part of the article, I find it hard to digest the conclusions you have drawn from the august epic Ramayana. All the stories we have been listening to as we grew up are not the real Ramayana. Ramayana is neither a melodrama nor a tale written for telling to kids with lullabies in the bed time. It was ingeniously framed to preach man-kind the etiquette of life regardless of one's caste, creed, region, color or profession and is so interwoven with life that you can find a impeccable solution to every problem you confront in your life. I'd rather prefer the word "psychology" to "mythology" to define Ramayana. Its the first piece of literature on motivation and personality development known to man kind.

I don't see Ram as a Lord but as a perfect human being, and if I ever happen to come across him, I'd rather like to call him "Sir Ram" and bow to him with due respect, citing him.

Do you think that the title "RAMAYANA" is after Ram's name? Sage Valmiki had never been a misogynist or biased. The fact that its original name was "RAMA YANA" meaning 'the journey(yana) of sita(rama)' is obscure to scores of people. Many shrouded facts will come into light and start influencing our lives once we start reading it with dedication and patience.

Please accept my apologies if you feel i had gone to extremes in an attempt to support my cause.

Great insights on the life of Sita. I believe somewhere still in India, women are expected to do things against her wish. And she cannot help it but be the victim of situation. If she rebels or comes out in open with a protest then she is bad woman, no civic sense, no sense at all. We have liberated the women but still a husband is not comfortable with her late night parties and mingling with other men etc. The argument and the grief of women in our country is endless. So I would just stop here by saying, very well written.Cheers!

How did I miss this awesome posts!!!!! ...and also some amazing metaphors.

My favorite lines :)

1. a wife is not a Hutch Puppy!2....doesn’t mean we’ll let history repeat itself.3. Sita was a case of bad karma. Despite having everything – good looks, royal lineage, moolah and a prince charming, she led a life far worse than a beleaguered tele bahu.4. She sighed – Ahh, the joys of being a single mother with not a single paisa for child support! And the burn marks from the Agni Pariksha still hurt. 5.Get lost wifey, my Dhobi hates your face!

Loved this blog. Especially because I wrote a "somewhat" similar blog a little while ago.Do check it out if you are interested.http://prashanthkishan.blogspot.com/2012/07/cloak-of-invisble-decency.html